


Phantom Pains

by cinderfell



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: And To Not Be Ignored By Her Only Living Relative, Angst, Cass Needs A Break, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 05:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10379835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderfell/pseuds/cinderfell
Summary: Castle Whitestone is haunted by ghosts, although not in the way that the servants think.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i don't do full on angst without coupling it with fluff and comfort most of the time, and even though this is pure angst it's like... Angst Lite(TM). but man, cass can't catch a break, can she?

There are ghosts in Castle Whitestone.

They drift between the shadows of the empty corridors, their forms lingering just out of focus at the corner of one’s vision. There have been stories for a long time now-- whispered accounts passed from servant to servant, the tales told by the odd bard or storyteller who passes through-- of the figures that supposedly appear in the castle, although the stories range from fantastical scaremongering as a performance for a few coins to the frightened paranoia of a maid cleaning out a dusty room by herself.

Cassandra knows better than to place any stock in their words, but she also knows that, in a way, they aren’t completely false.

For better or for worse, she sees them too, although she knows they aren’t the spirits of the murdered de Rolos come to terrorize their home in the living world, to avenge their untimely deaths (there has been enough vengeance from the surviving members of the family anyways); her family is long gone. They-- these ghosts, spirits, whatever the servants and storytellers wish to call them-- are fragmented pieces of the youngest de Rolo’s own mind. No more, no less.

There are often times where Cassandra finds it hard to determine whether she’s dreaming or awake, haunted by the perpetual feeling of floating along through memories. It’s only worsened by her confinement to the castle itself, both the birthplace and slaughterhouse for nearly an entire generation of the de Rolos. For five years it was a confinement against her will; an imprisonment. Now it’s one of choice. Of duty.

She sees her father in her study (his study), sometimes. She sees him pacing back and forth between the door and her desk ( _his_ desk) while shuffling and reading papers, murmuring to himself as he goes. A part of her wants to open her mouth, tell him that he’ll dig a hole right through the floor if he keeps going like that-- the same way her mother would-- but she doesn’t. She purses her lips and takes a seat at the desk, shutting down thoughts of the stern but clever man who raised her as she turns her attention to the monumental task of running a city.

And as for her mother? Well, perhaps Cassandra lucked out in that. She hardly finds herself confronting her mother’s ghost, although that’s mostly because of her self-imposed confinement to the castle and the fact that she has little business down in the armory and the practice ranges, where Johanna de Rolo spent most of her time. But sometimes if she lingers too long in the hallway that leads to what was once her parents’ room, she can hear the familiar click of hunting boots on the stone, as if Johanna is just coming home from one of her hunts in the woods.

(The new presence of Vex’ahlia often throws her off, however. The older woman is different than her mother in a lot of ways-- the pointed ears, for a start, and the darker complexion-- but there’s just… something about her. Her _eyes_ , so sharp and perceptive, like she never misses anything that happens in a room. Or her quick wit and infectious charm, and the wry, knowing grin that’s spread across her face more often than not. The ranger is often poised and proper, like she was born for the nobility given to her late in life, but there’s something wild about her, something fierce and untamed despite the way she presents herself. It’s… _uncanny_ how two different women who’ve never met and never will can radiate the same energy.

The click of her hunting boots as she walks arm in arm with Percival or her mirror image is enough to unsettle Cassandra, the feeling of the half-elf’s sharp eyes on her enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She seems like a good woman, from what little Cassandra has spoken to her, and it’s not her fault. If anything it’s Cassandra’s, like many things.)

The rest of her blood is nearly inescapable, her siblings seemingly everywhere she looks. Julius, crooning about the women and men down at the brothels in his cruder moments and helping her practice her Elvish in the gentler ones; Vesper, sitting in the library with that awful white cat of hers curled up in her lap, a pile of books at her side as she determinedly attempts to work her way through the entire Whitestone library; Whitney and Oliver, twins joined at the hip who taught her about the secret passages in the castle; Ludwig, who spent most of his time fawning over their mother’s hounds and eagerly awaiting the day Johanna would let him accompany her on one of her hunts.

The worst of the ghosts, she thinks, is the one with breath still in his lungs who creeps around her with softer, shyer footsteps than the ones without form. The dance he does around her-- the dance that he doesn’t think she notices, but how can she not-- to put distance between them, to hold her at arm's length at all times. It’s insufferable. It’s ridiculous. But most of all-- worst of all-- it’s understandable, because more often than not she finds herself following his lead, falling into the sway of his dance herself.

The darker part of her still remembers the wicked pain in her back as her dress darkened with red and he slipped from her fingers and into the night, leaving her screaming for him on the forest floor. She remembers the anger, the disbelief. The fear. The pained understanding that-- were their situations reversed-- she’s not sure if she could safely say she’d stay to help Percival instead of running.

Sometimes she still feels them; one, two, three, _four_ arrows protruding from her back like a grotesque parody of wings, or the spiked spine of a creature that shouldn’t be touched. The arrows were pulled long ago, within minutes of them puncturing her flesh and the men realizing she was alive, but she feels the holes they left-- the rotten, awful marks they left deep inside of her, still festering years later.

She can’t help but wonder what her parents would think of her now-- of both of their surviving children: a man who’d sooner run from his family’s legacy out of guilt and a woman who turned against her own city when it needed help most. They’re both broken, both damaged beyond total repair, and Cassandra knows somewhere inside the fractured remnants of her heart-- and she knows that her brother knows too-- that the last of the de Rolo children are weak.

 _Even rotten things can help breathe life into something beautiful eventually_ , her father had told her one day while she watched him tend to the plants in the back gardens, on his hands and knees in the dirt-- just a man, a gardener, not the stiff-backed proper lord he was in the castle.

As she pours through the papers piling up on her desk, her head full of ghosts, Cassandra hopes that he’s right; because there _is_ something rotten about her and Percival, down to their very cores. They can fill it in and slap bindings over it, pray to Pelor for it to get better, but there’s always going to be something off about the two of them.

She just hopes that they’re enough for Whitestone, because they’re all it has-- and it’s all _they_ have, in the end.


End file.
